Open for Business has held its first annual
OfB Open Choice Awards and KDE 3.0 has won in the categoryBest Desktop Environment:
"If the KDE Project had been content to stick with KDE 2.x, this may very
well have been GNOME's year to shine. Unfortunately for the younger project, KDE
moved forward at such a rapid pace this year, some people thought the project's
development process might crumble under its own weight. It did not, and KDE 3.0
emerged as the most polished, professional desktop available for Unix and
Unix-like systems."

The KDE mail client KMail won in the categoryBest E-mail Client and KDE's integrated development environmentKDevelop won in the categoryBest Development Tool.Kopete, KDE's multi-protocol messaging client, won an honourable mention in the categoryBest Communications Software.

Comments

the only runner up was Enlightenment which is not a desktop environment. And the only argument for that was that 'Enlightenment has a beautiful interface that is a pleasure to work with'. And to nominate Enlightment as a runner up for a desktop environment must be a bad joke. Enlightenment is obviously a dead project, and as you probably know Rasterman says that the future of computing is not desktop environment but those little appliances that run kastrated applications called 'embedded'.

What do you mean not a desktop environment. It is certainly not just a window manager. It has a lot of functionality and extras, maybe not as COMPLETE as KDE, but still it certainly has some interesting stuff there.

It has probably something of a desktop, but it is certainly not a desktop environment. The development environments are actually the biggest part of a DE like KDE or GNOME, not the panel and background managment.

A desktop environment has to have some functionality which Enlightenment doesn't have: panel, icons on the desktop and at least a file manager. Not to talk about a lot of applications (browser, e-mail client, irc client, office suite etc. etc.). It has been announced that Evolution 0.17 would have some of DE functionality, but it is not here yet. And taking in consideration that Rasterman has a very pessimistic opinion about the future of Linux desktops I doubt it that you will see Enlightenment 0.17 in near future. When a main coder of a project doesn't believe in what he is doing the future of that project doesn't look bright.

Yes, of course, there can be different approaches...
In fact, Netscape promised to build Desktop based on Browser. Hey, when it was? I guess ... 7 years ago!

So far, all major OSes/environments (Windows, MacOS, KDE, GNOME) use Panel.
And (almost) all users are get used to those Panels.
So, I think there is nothing wrong to use Panel in mainstream Desktop Environment.

Not so fast. MacOS, IIRC, didn't use to have a panel before version 10, yet nobody would say that it wasn't a desktop environment. OSX inherited the panel from NeXT's dock which, however far you stretch it, was not really a panel. And NeXT didn't have icons on the desktop either. Yet, many will agree that NeXT was a desktop environment, much like GNUstep, which doesn't have a panel or icons on the desktop, but still provides the basic infrastructure libraries.

It doesn't have to look and smell like Windows to be a desktop. The power of KDE is that you don't really need the kicker or the desktop icons to be productive. It's true that the panel idea is very common (you forgot CDE and, by extension, XFCE), but it doesn't mean that one cannot do without it.

On the other hand, Raster & co keep stressing that E17 will not be a DE, but a desktop shell.

About the panel. Is not the panel supposed to represent things that we usually do not keep on top of our desk? Like the trashcan. Usually, I put the trashcan on the floor and my "home"(my files) on the shelves. The desk(desktop) is only for stuff I am currently working with. I have fanally seen somebody take the trashcan of the desk, Mac OS X. Iguess it is possible in KDE too.

Yeah I had exactly the same thought. The desktop is stupid place to put my trashcan and important stuff on. And it's funny how this analogy fits for computer systems. :) The desktop is great to temporarily place work there but it's awefull for important stuff (because it constantly gets covered by something).

Ok, Rasterman can be very pessimistic about the future of Linux desktops, but I am pretty optimistic. :-)
Well, not only Enlightenment - also IceWM development stagnated (as it was predicted by some people). Hopefully, this doesn't affect KDE at all. Neither IceWM not E are important for KDE success.
Re: "Rasterman has a very pessimistic opinion about the future of Linux desktops" - you are right. I doubt E will have success with such low morale.

One other note: I should mention while E was the only runner up, we also considered GNOME 2.0 for the award. Unfortunately, GNOME kept crashing on our test system (using GARNOME-based GNOME 2.0), and some things just didn't work at all.

Advantages:
1) You can build an entire *self contained* GNOME system in a user account.
2) You don't have to struggle with Makefiles, downloading packages, dependencies etc. With GARNOME, the appropriate packages are downloaded and built for you
3) GARNOME includes a host of other GNOME 2 apps a well as the the GNOME Desktop
4) Did I mention self contained :) This means it won't mess up your system libs etc etc. To delete it, all you do is delete the garnome directory and you're done!

If you'd like more information, I'm sure I can help. Try it out! 0.12.2 is extremely stable and well worth looking at :)

Thanks for explanation, GARNOME's idea sounds very solid and interesting.
But I am somewhat limited on time at a moment (KHTML still has bugs, need to close some :-), so I would prefer to download Mandrake RPMs, as I did before.

garnome is a port(age)-like installation system for DE. This means: building your own packages from source. Its supports Gnome2 and KDE3.0.2
If you like this kind of software distribution leave your current distro and switch over to Gentoo-Linux (gg:gentoo).
Installation of KDE in Gentoo: "emerge kde" (... wait half of a day ...) ready!
Its so nice, and one of the best choices for stable KDE-packages!

Right, so you used a packaged version of KDE but compiled up your own version of GNOME 2.0. Did you read the release notes? I'm betting not, since only those people who haven't have had serious problems with GNOME 2.0.

Thanks for confirming what I already had a pretty good idea of. You are a KDE rag, and wouldn't know the quality of GTK/GNOME from a hole in the wall. Your awards are a sham... and in South Park language, I call shennanigans.

Yes, I compiled my own version of GNOME 2, since my distro didn't have packages for it yet. I carefully followed the directions provided by the GARNOME team, installed all the needed dependencies, and then let it happily go to work. The result: An unusable copy of GNOME 2.

As I said, I could have just ignored GNOME 2, since there wasn't a Ximian package or a normal package available... but that would have only disqualified GNOME. Wasn't it better I spent the time and effort to *try* to consider it?

Now, really, if you want to be fair about all of this, the GNOME users visiting the dot really should quit assuming guilty until proven innocent. I know you'd love to find a way to prove I tried to make GNOME 2 fail, but there simply isn't anyway to do that. I was very excited about GNOME 2. I wanted GNOME 2 to go well. I was even considering switching to GNOME 2 if everything went alright. That, if anything, was biased towards GNOME and not against it.

>As I said, I could have just ignored GNOME 2,
>since there wasn't a Ximian package or a normal
>package available... but that would have only
>disqualified GNOME. Wasn't it better I spent the
>time and effort to *try* to consider it?

No, you didn't have to ignore it, but I didn't see you making it clear that you weren't using a packaged version, but rather one you'd thrown together yourself - and as I said, not read the notes.

As for this "it wasn't ready" - fine, if you want to do a proper comparison you wait until it is or ignore it making clear why. What you did was a hatchet job dressed up as fair comment.

As for slamming Evolution for not integrating with KDE... boo hoo. How about slamming KMail for not integrating with GNOME. Oh yes, that's "because KDE is the most popular" - which shows why your awards are a worthless sham and you have little or no journalistic integrity.

Okay, first, I didn't comment on GNOME at all except saying that it might have been "GNOME's year to shine" had it not been for KDE 3.0. So there was clearly no place to mention the fact that I built my own packages (which usually provides good results with KDE). If you notice the Awards were done as brief mini-reviews, and as such, such details - especially about those that did not win was a bit excessive. I did read the instructions on the GARNOME site (as I mentioned) more info on the GNOME site, and who knows what else, so why I would say I didn't read the notes is beyond me.

Re: waiting, you surely don't expect me to delay awards for a product that isn't ready, do you? C'mon it might not be ready until the end of the year, that is just silly.

Finally, I didn't slam Evolution. I gave it a runners up, which was a pretty good thing considering there are also a number of other very good clients out there. No, Evolution isn't integrated with KDE, and yes I found KDE more intuitive, thus I found Evolution less intuitive then the one that integrates with a system I found more intuitive - and that is unfair how? Simply put KMail benefits from the features that caused us to choose KDE as the best desktop, therefore, KMail did have the upperhand. However, if you had read all of my comments, you would know there were other reasons I didn't pick Evolution (such as the fact that it was unstable and had GPG problems).

I know it is terribly disappointing that GNOME didn't do an awards sweep this year, but as I noted Gaim and OEone - which both depend on GTK - both took top honors in different categories.

So far, you've slammed my reputation a number times with unsubstantiated evidence. Isn't that what you have accused me of doing with GNOME?

>So there was clearly no place to mention the fact that I built my own packages

Oh really... no place to state a basic fact? Well, I suppose that tells us even more about your style.

>(which usually provides good results with KDE)

It does with GNOME. The idiots who scream ./configure && make && make install is easy, know nothing. You need to know what to do... you already admit that you are familiar with KDE and not too familar with GNOME. Presumably, this is the first time you've bothered to compile it.

>Re: waiting, you surely don't expect me to delay awards for a
>product that isn't ready, do you? C'mon it might not be ready
>until the end of the year, that is just silly.

Did I say that? I believe I gave a couple of options. Wait, or don't includ GNOME 2 at all - stating why. You chose to do a hatchet job on a something you didn't understand and didn't even state that you had compiled it yourself. Just out of interest, when things didn't work in your self-compiled version, did you bother to check with some GNOME mailing lists to find out what your problem might be. Or did you forget all about such a basic thing.

>more intuitive - and that is unfair how?

Criticising a product, one written for GNOME, because it doesn't integrate with your own favourite desktop is fair how? You are simply twisting words. All of the things you criticising Evolution for were simply wrong... especially when it is used in a GNOME environment. As for "unstable" - this is simply rubbish. For all I know you have compiled the damned things yourself again. If you read my other comment, I've been using it for a very long time and had no trouble. Now obviously that doesn't rule out possible problems, but you do already have a track record for not revealing important details and a definite bias mixed with cluelessness.

>I know it is terribly disappointing that GNOME didn't do
>an awards sweep this year

And this is pathetic... it just reveals your real biases.

You just don't get it, do you. GNOME 2 came out a month ago. it has had no time to mature. I don't *care* if it sweeps your stupid awards. I am tired of reading biased rubbish from KDE sites that try to portray themselves as neutral. Had you simply stated that you considered GNOME 2 too immature for the moment and left it out I doubt it would have caused any fuss.

>So far, you've slammed my reputation a number
>times with unsubstantiated evidence. Isn't that
>what you have accused me of doing with GNOME?

The only reputation you are getting is for being biased; not revealing important details in your "awards"; and being a click-through-whore.

None of that is unsubstantiated for anyone who has followed your site's antics over the last day or so.

First, yes, there was no room - BECAUSE I DIDN'T MENTION HOW GNOME FAIRED IN THE AWARDS. You can't mention why every package didn't get the award if you want to focus on those that did. Honestly, I don't remember if it was the first time I compiled the software or not. I suspect it probably was, I usually use the RPMs (when available), but GARNOME was so easy it was a snap... and fast too. I should note I've used/tested GNOME since version 0.12. Either way the product was *obviously* not ready for primetime yet - something most everyone admits - so why are you surprised it didn't win? KDE won, why not leave it at that?

Now, on Evolution I used precompiled packages included with Mandrake 8.1 IIRC. Associate Editor Steven Hatfield I think may have used Red Carpet or used precompiled packages for SuSE 7.2... I'm pretty sure he used Red Carpet. We both had trouble.

Anyway, I think I've shown I'm even willing to discuss things with trolls, so how about being a bit kinder, eh? Each message you accuse me of new and horrible wrongs... I'll be up to using Windows to write the review soon. ;-) And, no, I didn't do that - I used KWord (I vary between KWord and OpenOffice depending on my mood) and WordPerfect 8 for Linux.

Anyway, so far you have yet to explain how I'm biased when I have attacked KDE in numerous places. You've also failed to show how most awards come with disclaimers about why each product considered didn't win. Listen, why get nasty? I'm trying to explain what happened here, and you *want* to think I did something... don't you?

About the RedHat story: I didn't expect it to be big... it was, but I didn't expect it to be. It was, most people agreed, and I left a great big link at the bottom of it so everyone could see for themselves what happened. Furthermore, within an hour of RedHat's change of heart I had updated information online and contacted LT to let them know RedHat had resolved the problem. Would someone truly who is truly biased zealot do that?

The simple fact is, I've taken the middle road most of the time. I prefer KDE for myself, but at the same time I anxiously await every GNOME release. I also prefer Gaim to Kopete, think Mozilla is really nice, and prefer Mandrake's GTK-based config tools to SuSE's Qt-based ones. I think my record - if you really examine it - speaks for itself. I use what works best in my opinion.

Emphasis on opinion - the exact reason why I made sure the RedHat story was a commentary story. It was my opinion RedHat was in the wrong. It is your opinion they are not. We are both biased different ways. Can't we leave it at that and drop the vicious attacks?

I just read through the board and i am stunned by your ignorance. First of all, did you ever think about process time when rating. Enlightenment using gnome's desktop enviroment even outperforms kde. Using enlightenment, fluxbox, or icewm with the xfce desktop beats kde speedwise hands down. I wouldn't be surprised if explorer could be faster. You could probably check considering most of your boxes have windows on them. Kde is for know-nothing linux users whothink they know what they are doing because they are efficient in windows. Kde is just an explorer replacement for windows. If you want user friendliness, why would you use linux in the first place. As for your credibility, i know nothing about you, but knowing that you primarily use rpms and will try to use them at all cost is a good indicator of what you know. Why would you use binaries that were compiled to some other computer, when you can compile them on yours, so they are built to your computer. Using precompiled binaries is about as low as using the precompiled kernel that came with your distro. Such things like Elinks and Naim most likely are rather to you. I dont fully support Gnome as it is based on the same theory that kde is, user friendliness, but if i was so inept as to have to have someone combine a window manager, a desktop, a "panel", and a bunch of do-it-for-you configuration programs, i would choose gnome any day of the week and i definately would find myself qualified to rate anything in the linux community. At least with most standalone wms and desktop enviroments you have the ability to tailor it exactly the way you want it. Using kde i feel contricted, the same feeling as being in windows. The beauty of linux is that you are free, why give up that freedom? Although going without your fancy desktop enviroment and file manager is a little tough(though i dont see how), why take the fun away from yourself figuring out how to do it. It is morons like you that are ruining linux. If i was a pessimist and thought linux as we know it is dying, i would blame distros like red hat and mandrake, and most importantly, i would blame kde.

One longer sentence: I would have replied more carefully, but the thought of reading that huge solid block of letters makes my head hurt.

One inadequate answer: I am a goddamn knowledgeable Linux user. The first kernel I compiled was 1.1.53pl15 in a Yggdrasil fall plug and play linux distro. Now that the geeky bragging is done: I install RPMs every time I can (unless the version I want is not available as RPM).

If it is not available, I *make* a RPM of it (checkinstall is nice and easy).

Why? Because the alleged optimization of self-compiling is simply unmeasured so far. Take Gentoo. Take Slackware. Take Fedora. Do something. Measure it.

If you have a number, good, then come and say how self-compiling is great. If you don't, you are just making noise, telling people they should do things the harder, slower (compiling takes longer) way, based on no data.

Your comments about "if i was so inept as to have to have someone combine a window manager, a desktop, a "panel", and a bunch of do-it-for-you configuration programs" is really a sign of muddled thinking or ignorance.

How is kicker combined with kdesktop or kwin? They are separate programs.

Sure, they share libraries. They also share libraries with enlightenment, if you care.

Now, they share way *more* libs with each other, that is true.

But how is that bad? That actually brings resource usage *down*.

Unless all you want is to start a WM and look at it, you need apps. If those apps share libs with each other, there's less code duplication, and for equal functionality, resource usage should be lower.

For example, open kwin (without kicker, kdesktop, etc), and blackbox.

Resource usage for blackbox will be lower.

Now, suppose you want to browser a web page. You can use a mozilla variant, or, konqueror, which are the only adequate browsers (ok, there's opera).

Guess what? kwin+konqueror will use less resources than blackbox+konqueror or blackbox+mozilla.

If you really want to use your computer instead of fiddle with it or look at it, an integrated desktop and RPMs are the way to go, Dude. Trust me, I used Yggdrasil.

Their reasoning for choosing KMail instead of Evolution is... "interesting" at best:
"KMail received the award because it is very stable an mature. While Evolution is very nice, we've either experience or heard a number of problems with it. Further more, with estimates of KDE usage at over 50% of the market, having an application with a common look, dialogs, and address book is a big plus to lower training costs."

The whole article looks like this too me. "We think this is cool and we heard that others have problems with something, also most people use this, etc".
I hope you don't misunderstand this as the bitching of a sore Gnome supporter, I just don't like when someone makes a big fuss about their ratings when infact they didn't more research than the usual slashdot user.

Choosing Enlightenment because it looks neat and polished is also very interesting for a business related website. Considering that E is probably one of the least userfriendly of all windowmanagers and it's not even a DE...

I agree with you. Choosing Enlightenment as the runner-up desktop environment should raise a red flag as to the judgment of the judges. I also agree that the reasoning for not choosing Evolution was a bit weak.

Nontheless, KDE 3.0 is a beautiful desktop environment, and KMail is a great email client. Both could deservedly be seen to win their awards (reasonable minds can differ :-). I just think that the awards/recognition would be a bit more satisfying if the judges were more thorough in their thinking.

Hi,
Let me clarify a bit. On Evolution, we did experience problems, as did others we are in communication with. It should have said "we've experienced and heard..." Re the other information, having integration with the most popular desktop is indeed a big plus, it's something that Windows users expect.

As far as Enlightenment, if properly configured (as Mandrake has it), we were able to quickly change basic settings and launch all of our favorite applications. In addition to this, it looks and feels polished. Face it, people coming from a Windows background expect polish. Quite frankly, E worked much better in our tests then GNOME 2. GNOME 2 was extremely unrelable to work with.

No, this didn't help.
Enlightenment is still a windowmanager (it can even be the windowmanager for GNOME) and beeing more integrated into the most used system is still no reason to award an application. Of course everyone who uses KDE should use KMail for this reason but that doesn't make Evolution (with GNOME integration) worse. You can't just expect that everyone of your readers is running KDE now that you awarded it. Evolution is also known to be very stable and reliable when "properly configured" (in recent versions at least).

I whish their will be a time when KDE and GNOME supporters can be really fair and honest and not constantly backstab each other.

Enlightenment is much more then a basic Window manager (even if it isn't a full blown desktop environment). But if it was, WM's and DE's both deserve a shot at the award. E is quite good, and suitable for business usage.

Now back to Evolution. The key point is, KMail integrates with the most popular D.E. - the D.E. that is preferred with every distro that is admits it is a desktop distro. It is also the D.E. we found most usable in our awards. KMail has a very similar feature set (if only considering e-mail and not PIM functions) to Evolution. Now, if we add on top of that in our experience and that of our collegues, that Evolution crashes more, has more trouble with GPG, etc., doesn't that make it a good reason to pick KMail?

Back to integration for a moment, consider this: We say "KDE is really great, you should use KDE." Then, we are suppose to say "you shouldn't use this nice, full featured, stable e-mail client that works with KDE, you should use this less stable one that looks completely different and will raise TCO (due to training costs), 'cuz it has PIM fuctionality." Does this make sense? I know that is taking what you are saying to the extreme, but I think it does demonstrate the fact that it is perfectly reasonable to base part of a decision on the fact that one works better with the best D.E. (according to our awards).

It would be, but the point is, if you give people different tools that work differently, you raise the training costs. For instance, if you standardize on KDE, you have common save/insert box, standard dialog box, integrated address book, etc. Everything works together - like in Windows.

On the other hand GTK and thus Evolution has very different, confusing (for a newbie) dialog boxes, a seperate address book, etc. Also without changing settings, the right e-mail client will not launch when you click an e-mail link somewhere in KDE.

This is all solvable, but the former stuff is kind of bad in large deployments and the latter (changing of e-mail settings) is bad of SMB clients. If you've ever provided technical support, you will know how much the average person is comfortable doing on their own. The more everything is alike, the lower the TCO.

And this completely ignores two other concerns. Having both GTK and QT/KDE running at the same time eats more resources, and thus requires more processing power (admittedly, just running GNOME requires less resources). Also, this ignores the aestetic preference for applications to look and act alike.

Anyway, not everyone will agree, but I think you can see that this at least isn't a completely unreasonable point of view.

Most definately. I've tried every major release of GNOME in the hopes that I'd fine it as usable as KDE. GNOME 2.0 feels like it is really headed in the right direction, the default layout iinally feels like it was designed with usability in mind. So, I'll be really looking forward to GNOME 2.2 and the GNOME ports of Evolution, as well as my personal favorite GTK apps - Gaim and GIMP.

If GNU/Linux had two desktops that were as usable (or more so then) Windows and Mac OS, that couldn't hurt at all!

On the other hand GTK and thus Evolution has very different, confusing (for a newbie) dialog boxes, a seperate address book, etc. Also without changing settings, the right e-mail client will not launch when you click an e-mail link somewhere in KDE.

Don't forget about File Open/Save dialogs. Dialogs in GNOME1 and GNOME2 are TERRIBLE! I have many folders (200+ important ones, I guess), with many files in each one (some of them have 1500+ HTML files), and it's really headache to open/browse those folders using GNOME dialogs, or Mozilla, or some similar ugly, ill-fated tool.
But I found following elegant solution :-)

I open URL in Konqueror (incl. URLs for local file system), than copy/paste URL to Mozilla or Galeon, that's it!
Do I need to explain that Mozilla/Galeon /GNOME is some kind of *overhead* in such scenario?

Also, Mozilla is being ported to GTK2 and there is some talk about changing the file selectors in that. If you *reall* don't like the look of Mozilla, wait for Galeon 2 to come out. That will be completely integrated with GNOME 2

So, they're making it look more like the KDE dialog?
Good - eventually they'll copy *all* of KDE's usability improvements, and I'll actually be able to try GNOME for more than half an hour without giving up in frustration at the bad design mistakes.

Ok, thanks for screenshots.
They are indeed better than GNOME1 File Open/Save dialogs, but too much rudimentary, IMO.
KDE3's dialogs are much more advanced.

As about Mozilla and Galeon - I don't like *both* of them.
I use Konqueror, as it's superior to Mozilla and MS IE.
When you have *THE BEST* technology at hand, available for free, there is no reason to use *second best*.
I would appreciate if Mozilla will be re-written to GTK2. It takes Mozilla 1.0 around 20-30sec. to start here. Galeon much faster, but still uses too much memory (up to 40MB), and slow-downs my computer a lot...
So, Mozilla itself should be fixed first. AFAIK Chris Blizzard is working on it (at least, he promised me *to make Mozilla faster* some time ago)
But so far, I don't see results...